I am technologically skilled to some extent, but not nearly enough to justify the financial investment I'm about to make In a home server without checking that I'm not way off the mark. Reddit tech answers are usually useless, all jerking each other off about being the most vague and useless. So I'm here, just humbly asking if my plan will work before I waste a ton of money if it doesn't.
So I want to run immich, jellyfin, vaultwarden, and a couple other small programs (including backup automation) on a home server. The photos and videos are very important and I want off of large corporate cloud services for all the reasons you can imagine. There are about 2TB of important photos and data right now to backup.
So my plan: a mini pc with a low-level i3 or i5 chip but about 256gb SSD and 8gb ram. I will buy a UPS, a hub/NAS for 2 4TB HDDs, and a separate hub for backups elsewhere on another 4TB HDD. I already have a pc with an ok graphics card (only like 8 years old, but it was above average then) and good processor. My plan is to run the server with Linux, docker, and portainer on the mini-pc, and do the most intensive work (things like local Machine Learning on the photo library in immich) on the gaming pc. To save on energy, the mini pc is the only thing on most of the time, and I will turn on the old gaming pc to do the hard tasks.
I am hoping a friend will allow me to (somehow? I don't know how yet) keep a hub+HDD backup at their place which is updated weekly automatically whenever their computer turns on.
Is this all achievable? Am I missing something small or huge? Any tech people here know something that I'll likely miss on my first attempt?
Very achievable! I would recommend just buying Unraid as an OS, it makes things so so so much easier imo. Also, just grab an old pc off of eBay or if you have one lying around just put it in a more suitable case. My server is a 4th gen i5 that I got for free and it does everything I need it to do with no difficulty. If you want locally hosted machine learning or LLM models, or doing video encoding, then spring for at least an 8th Gen Intel (most Intel CPUs have an edge on AMD for these purposes.).
If you go with the older stuff, ram is cheaper because it's of an older standard that is being phased out and isn't in high demand. For hard drives, go on eBay and buy used enterprise grade drives. I like the HGST ones filled with helium. They'll usually have 5-8 years of up time on the clock in a heavy load setting, and in a home use setting they'll easily last a decade or more.
If you have a pc recycler place near you, search through their inventory for useful stuff. And don't cheap out on your power supply!
Im not American, so this all sounds like Greek to me lol. As you can see by the name, im in the Netherlands, and here this used/cheap market is non-existent lol. People resell things at like 90% of new price around here.